Gobbolino the Witch's Cat

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His supernatural powers finally removed, Gobbolino finds himself reunited with the very family whose father wanted to drown him at the beginning of the book for being a witch's cat! As well as writing, she became involved in local life around the village of Beckford, where she and her family lived, organizing children's parties, and serving as a magistrate. Sometimes, we feel that we don't belong--that there is something more out there for us and I admire Gobbolino's desire to break away from what's expected of him.

He tries to be a normal kitchen cat, first at a farm, then an orphanage, then the mayor's house, but his magic always gets him into trouble. He will find some people to live with, and all goes well, until they discover he is a witch's cat and will chase him out and on to the next chapter where the exact same thing will happen with some new people. The pedlar-woman leaves him in the care of his sister, Sootica, and her mistress, but once again he is unable to complete his tasks. Blessed with some magic, Gobbolino is able to use this to his advantage at times, but superstition follows him wherever he goes. A perfect story for A Puffin Book with charming black and white illustrations by the author, Ursula Moray Williams.

I bought this book so that I could read it to my children, and hope that they would love it as much as I did as a child. His heritage gives almost everyone around him reason to move him on, and his life becomes one adventure after another as yet another home becomes unwelcoming and rebuffs the kitten. This sets him apart from other witch's cats like his twin sister Sootica, who have pure black fur and green eyes.

Abandoned by his mother and her witch because his "abnormal" white paw and blue eyes makes him unsuitable as a witch's cat, Gobbolino sets off to find a loving home. Finally accepting his magic, Gobbolino becomes the pedlar-woman's assistant, but his good heart and unwillingness to cause pain mean he fails at every task he is set.Along the way, his magic and kindness brought happiness to many, yet his own happiness never really lasted.

It is so monotonous, I could barely bring myself to read on, but I wanted to finish it since I knew I enjoyed it as a child. I prefer to believe that she simply failed to think through the unpleasant implications of Gobblino's contentment at fitting in with a family whose head wanted to destroy him merely for being what he was born to be, through no fault of his own. She wrote and illustrated over sixty books for children with the most notable being Gobbolino the Witch's Cat and The Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The world Gobbolino ventured into was not ready to accept him as who he was; in that world, he could either be a witch's cat, or a kitchen cat, not something in between.He is adopted by a sick princess, but when she is well again she leaves for boarding school without him, so he joins a Punch and Judy show as 'Toby the Dog', but a witch in the audience reveals him as a witch's cat. Still, the charm of Gobbolino and the interest of his varied adventures, as well as the deep questions that the book raises and embodies, are more than enough to compensate for the equivocal ending.